Whipped

For the last few years, the studios have been churning out puerile Porky’s Revenge retreads at a rate of knots – but while it’s been impossible to sit through any of them without wincing, it’s safe to say that none of them has even come close to approaching the depths of sheer unredeemed awfulness plumbed by Whipped.

This thoroughly nasty piece of work makes the recent Peaches look like a tour de force of maturity and sensitivity, based as it is upon a gaggle of sad young males who spend the entirety of their time trading tall tales of rampant sexual activity. Nothing all that new here, then, except that the characters have such a depressingly deep contempt for the female form, for themselves and for each other, that you’re left nostalgically harking after the warmth and humanity of American Pie.

It’s not the relentless avalanche of emotionally retarded adolescent bragging (‘She gummed my knob, dudes’) that really offends, it’s the blanket dehumanisation of all parties and the sneery, leering, hate-filled tone of every single verbal exchange. Three thoroughly repugnant specimens (Brad, Jonathan and Zeke) sit around endlessly, bickering inanely and scoring points off one another by graphically illustrating their fictitious accounts of ‘stabbin’ cabin’ adventures with hordes of ‘fine honeys’, when it’s transparently obvious that none of them can realistically aspire to any activity more advanced than ‘feeding the geese’.

The trio all bounce stories off their married pal Eric, whose ‘whipped’ status earns him much in the way of scorn and derision (“But that’s sick, dude – that’s your wife!”). Meanwhile, in a less-than-ingenious twist, a scheming manipulative hound named Mia affects genuine interest in all three (separately, without letting the others know). It’s hinted that this unexpected development forces them all to discover untapped reserves of decency and respect for women, but the intended effect is totally neutralised by the leering manner in which the poor girl is filmed, and one very much doubts whether Amanda Peet will be able to watch this in a few years’ time without wanting to crawl into a hole.

Writer/director Cohen doesn’t exactly establish himself as the new creative voice of a generation, but he has at least had the astonishing honesty to admit that Whipped’s central trio of laddish losers are based on himself and his mates, adding, “There is a bit of me in all of these characters,” “all my friends are like this,” and advancing the preposterous notion that “All guys know they talk like this.” Exactly what has compelled him to share his (apparently deep-rooted) problems with the rest of the world is a matter probably best left unexplored by the rest of us: it is to be hoped that his career is a short one.

How awful is Whipped? Well, the hero – Brad – is prone to suggest loudly to pairs of women that they join him for a ‘Brad sandwich’.

It’s that good.